


2 Days Later

by orphan_account



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: 28 days later - Freeform, Alternate Universe, M/M, WTF even is this?, Zombies, shit goes down basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 20:58:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/654354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In one universe, Harry and Louis are members of the biggest boyband in the world.<br/></p><p>In another, they fight zombies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	2 Days Later

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a prompt on Tumblr:
> 
> "Can you write a Larry AU one shot where Louis turns into a zombie and the government is trying to kill all zombies so that the zombie disease or something doesn't spread around. But then Harry finds a cure for it and he has to try and save Louis before its to late and the government finds him and tries to kill him."

Harry had never much liked the film ’28 Weeks Later’. He’d only watched it once while having a movie marathon with an ex-boyfriend and had spent most of it squirming at the gore and general bad acting. And now here he was practically living the script.

Sighing at the irony of it all he checked behind him and swore as he realised the zombies had begun to speed up. Their cold dead eyes were focused on him as he broke into an all out sprint in order to escape their clutches. All he had to do was reach the thick metal doors of Liam’s apartment and he’d be safe from the advancing creatures.

Just 30 metres… 20… 15…

The garage door began to rise; revealing the animated corpse of what had once been an 18 year old conspiracy theorist.

“Heya Harry,” he grinned with already rotting teeth, raising a hand in recognition.

“Shit!” The boy ground to a halt, knowing there was nowhere to turn to. In front was his zombified friend, behind was a pack of others waiting to tear him apart.

He’d had a feeling it was going to be one of those days.

**(2 days earlier)**

_Bring, bring._

_Bring, bring._

Harry sat bolt upright in bed, thinking he was sleeping through his alarm. In his half awake haze he glanced at the clock, but the LED display read 01:34. The phone that lay next to it on the bedside table was also silent (he’d forgotten to charge it the evening before and the batteries had subsequently died at some point during the night) so what was making the ringing noise?

As the young man’s consciousness slowly filtered back into his brain he realised it had to be the landline phone along the hallway and quickly scrambled out of bed. Unless Zayn was giving him another drunken, ‘you’re my best friend’ call, no one phoned at one in the morning if it wasn’t serious.

It was only once he’d made his way to the bedroom door that it struck him that Louis had never returned the night before. This wasn’t a rare occurrence – after all, the crazy hours his boyfriend worked meant that he was often up until all hours during the week. It pissed Harry off sometimes that he wasn’t around as much as he’d like, but the older boy’s passion for his job was admirable.

The phone stopped ringing just as Harry stepped out onto the landing, causing him to curse under his breath. Padding along the carpet, he hoped that whoever had called had at least bothered to leave a message.

Sure enough as he reached the rather old fashioned cradle a blinking orange light confirmed it for him. Picking up the phone Harry pressed one of the buttons and held it to his ear.

“You have 3 new messages,” the robotic voice informed him, and he mentally reminded himself to check the landline more often. “Message 1, sent at 01:20 – Harry I don’t know why you’re not picking up your mobile but you need to get out of there!" Louis’ voice was rushed and panicky and unexpectedly loud in the near-silent house. “I don’t have time to explain, but they’re after me – they already got Eleanor. Just get away from the house, go somewhere I won’t expect, and whatever you do don’t come looking for me!”

Harry was utterly confused. He had no idea what the other young man was talking about, but the urgency in the message told him it was no joke. Fear began to niggle in the back of his mind as the mechanical voice began again in his ear.

“Message 2, sent at 01:31 – I really hope you’ve done what I asked because otherwise it might be too late.” This recording was the complete antithesis to the last one. The older boy sounded like he was trying his hardest to remain quiet as he whispered down the phone, causing his boyfriend to strain to hear his words. “They’re right outside the door and they’re not stupid Haz, not like in the movies. I don’t want to say what’s going to happen but please just know… oh crap.”

Louis’ tone dropped even lower until he was barely speaking. There were strange background noises that the teenager couldn’t quite make out, and he still had no idea who ‘they’ were. “They’re here, they’re coming. Oh my God, I’m sorry, I love –” there was an ominous screech and then the fuzzy white noise of the line being cut off.

Harry was so scared by then that he didn’t even realise that the machine hadn’t finished yet. His breathing was only just beginning to return to normal when the voice spoke up again. “Message 3, sent at 01:34 – Hello, ‘Curly’.”

The deep, throaty voice made him jump a mile, and he could hear the tinny sound of cackling laughter from where he’d dropped the phone in fright. Now utterly sobered by the strange events of the past few minutes, he realised that whoever it was that had got Louis must have dialled the most recent contact in his phone just to scare him. But that still didn’t explain who exactly it was that his boyfriend had been so terrified of, or where he was now.

Harry didn’t dare let himself think about the awful possibilities of what had been done to him. Firstly he needed to straighten his head and decide on a plan of action. Should he leave the house? The older boy had seemed to think that would be the best idea, but at that moment he felt safest in his own home.

Making his way into the kitchen he grabbed a notebook, pen and a bottle of water, deciding to try and work out who had been after Louis. He’d often found that writing down everything he knew about a situation often helped him realise what was staring him in the face.

He began with a title: _What got Boo_? Then around it he jotted down the facts he had available.

_Scary, got Eleanor, could find out where I live (use Lou?), dangerous, clever, in movies – portrayed as stupid, animalistic, monsters?, violent, malicious_. 

He stared at the words, trying to find some meaning within the chaos. Muttering them aloud, he looked at them logically and then in a more abstract way until it suddenly hit him like a punch in the face.

“Zombies,” he whispered under his breath – as ridiculous as it sounded that had to be the answer!

And that’s when a fist punched through the door.

**(1 day later)**

If Harry had been able to check the news whilst running for his life he would have found out that in just 24 hours an accident in the science laboratory Louis worked at had turned into a nationwide zombie epidemic. Doncaster had been quarantined off and there were now checkpoints at the entrances to all major cities to stop the spread of what had been labelled ‘Disease Z’.

As it happened he’d spent all his time since somehow managing to defend himself against one of the creatures desperately trying to escape them. After driving a couple of miles his car had ground to a halt but he’d simply got out and made his way on foot to the bus stop. He had no idea where he was going; just that he had to find his boyfriend.

However there were of course no buses at this time in the early morning, so he turned his sights to trying to catch a taxi cab despite the roads being completely empty of traffic. Just then an advert caught the teenager’s eye and he looked up a large billboard picture of a mother and son curled together on a sofa.

Gasping he realised what he’d forgotten: Anne was back at home in Cheshire, exactly where Louis would expect her to be. As much as it pained him to think that his partner might have been turned or tortured to give evidence, there was no telling whether the zombies might target Harry’s family as well as him. He looked around for a phone box – thankfully for the young man there was one situated nearby – then slipped in some change from his pockets and dialled his parent’s number.

The ringing seemed to go on forever, until eventually it was picked up by a sleepy sounding Anne.

“Who is it?” she asked groggily, and her son groaned inwardly at her lack of alertness.

“Mum,” he said quickly, knowing he couldn’t afford to waste time. “It’s Harry. You need to take Robin and go. Now.”

“What?” she asked, the seriousness in his voice obviously helping her to fully wake up. “Go where? Why? You’re not making sense Haz!”

“You’ve just got to get out. Go to – grandma’s or something. Please, just do as I ask. I can’t tell you why now.”

His words were reminiscent of the ones spoken to him by Louis what felt like days ago but was actually just an hour previously. The thought of his boyfriend set his stomach churning as the possibilities of his whereabouts filled the young man’s mind.

“Okay then, if it’s that serious we’ll go. But what about you – are you in danger?” Harry was touched by her concern but knew that there was no way he could worry her by telling the truth.

“I’ll be fine,” he reassured his mother. “I just want you to be safe. I love you.” 

And before she could rope him into further conversation he hung up. There was something not quite right about the whole scenario, and he’d just realised what it was. This was no time to be discussing his sister’s new boyfriend.

A girl was stood on the other side of the road, wrapped in several layers of clothing to disguise the quickly rotting flesh. Either these zombies weren’t as smart as Louis had thought, or they hadn’t realised how much Harry knew, but either way he recognised Eleanor – or what remained of her, at any rate – in an instant.

She was watching him from the entrance to a dark alleyway, evidently waiting for him to finish on the phone before attacking. As he realised this, and the possibility of his imminent death, their eyes met: hers glassy and lifeless; his emerald and terrified. That’s when it clicked to both of them that the other knew exactly what was going on.

For nearly a whole minute they simply stared at each other, as the boy slowly put down the phone and stepped out of the booth while still maintaining eye contact. Then a sharp pain in his foot caused him to glance down – and Eleanor charged. He tried to run, but his legs didn’t seem to want to obey him and he fell there in the street wishing it didn’t have to end like this.

Shuffling along the pavement desperately, he briefly saw what looked like a piece of glass sticking out of his foot before his vision was obscured by a corpse about to strike the life out of him.

Harry shut his eyes and prepared for the worst, until suddenly the sound of screeching tyres startled him. Unsure about what on earth was happening he felt himself being dragged roughly across the pavement and saw his attacker fall to the ground after being hit by something he couldn’t quite make out. Then a cloth was pinned over his face and the smell of chloroform filled his nose.

“How did my life turn into a movie?” he wondered just before the drugs kicked in.

***

He woke up with no idea where he was, just that he was moving. The memories came flooding back as he looked around at the leather upholstery and the rising sun outside the window.

“He’s awake, Liam.”

The Irish accented voice startled Harry and he turned to see a blonde teenager next to him talking to a tall pale young man who was driving the car.

“Who –” he began to ask, but was shushed immediately by the boy. “But how –” again the lad quietened him before he could finish his question. “Can’t you tell me where –” this time his companion had clearly had enough for he leaned over and clamped a hand over the curly haired adolescent’s mouth.

“Look,” he told him, his blue eyes serious. “I don’t want to have to send you to sleep again but can you please shut up?”

Although he appeared to be about the same age as the hostage the other boy scared him a little and he nodded dumbly at him. Just then a voice came from the front of the vehicle that he hadn’t heard before.

“Play nice, Niall.” The teen sighed but returned to his seat, and Harry cast a thankful glance at his driver who smiled back. “I’m sorry,” he said apologetically, “but we can’t tell you anything now. It’ll all be revealed soon, but at the moment we’re in a bit of a hurry.”

The dull throbbing in Harry's foot had already begun spreading to his head as his eyes began to slip closed once again.

**(1 day later)**

Harry had never been to London before and it was impossible not to feel a bit touristy even when the future of the world was at stake. As he walked purposefully through Trafalgar square he couldn’t help but stare at the famous landmarks surrounding him although he had no time to stop and examine them properly.

It had been a 3 hour drive from Doncaster to there and he’d spent most of it asleep after he’d realised his two companions weren’t going to say anything to him. When they’d arrived Liam had driven straight to the centre of the city and parked up outside a block of apartments that were entirely unnoticeable. The 3 boys had all gone through the metal doors to the ground floor, into one of the many small flats along the corridor and entered… Well, it could only really be described as a den, to be honest.

It was 65 square metres of pure chaos, from the books piled high in the sink to the dozens of cups of tea dotted around the room. In fact, the one place in the entire flat that was ordered was a large display board pinned to one of the walls on which was a variety of pictures and images all interconnected with lines and arrows.

Harry had felt as though he had stepped into the office of Dirk Gently.

Suddenly Liam was there beside him, smiling.

“It’s Niall’s work,” he'd told the slightly younger boy rather proudly. “He’s quite the little conspiracy theorist, aren’t you babe?”

The blonde boy nodded, putting an arm around his taller companion. Then the brunette had turned to their highly confused guest and became serious once again. “But I think it’s high time we told you exactly what is going on.”

***

It was strange, Harry thought, that he’d never really bothered asking exactly what it was that Louis did at his scientific research centre.

He had an official sounding title, and whenever he did begin to talk about work the younger boy would often find himself getting utterly confused merely by the vocabulary that his boyfriend used. But it was still a massive shock to learn that in actual fact he had been working in a branch of medical science connected to cryogenics, otherwise known as the freezing of bodies until future generations have found a way to cure them. Well, that was the impression he had got from Niall’s quick Irish babble.

There had been an accident - no one knew exactly what the origin of it was yet - which had somehow caused the corpses to become animated and begin walking around the lab, killing or turning anyone in their path.

Luckily for the curly haired boy, though, it turned out that the two teenagers who had saved his life/ kidnapped him (whichever way you want to look at it) had been observing him and Louis for a long time. The younger one of the two was a hard-core theorist who had copied his tracking ideas from those of the CIA, whereas Liam had ‘just had a feeling that this was going to happen’.

Harry wasn’t quite sure whether to be terrified of them or to support them completely, but they had made a promise he would do anything to keep. If he got them what they needed to create a cure for the zombies, then they would get him back Louis. And right now that was all he wanted.

***

It’s amazing how many places there are in cities that people simply don’t see even when they walk straight past. The little shop Harry had just entered was one such building, a spiritualism shop which stank of incense and was full of useless bits of card and string. The woman behind the counter was very old and wrinkled, but she seemed to know what her only customer of the day was there for before the chimes above the door had even stopped ringing.

“What you need is on the shelf behind you,” she croaked, and the teenager just nodded dumbly. In the past day or so he’d entered a strange world that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with, and this sort of event was beginning to feel almost normal.

Sure enough, on one of the rickety wooded shelves he could see the exact bottle Liam had described: it was purple tinted glass with faded words written on a blue label on it. Picking it up, he walked over to the counter and placed the bunch of notes on it. The old woman counted his money slowly and methodically, before nodding and sending him on his way.

The chimes were set off again as he left the shop, but were drowned out almost immediately as a high-pitched alarm began to sound, followed by a warning.

“Citizens of London, we have a code 9. I repeat, we have a code 9.”

For a moment everyone just looked at each other in total confusion, not knowing what the reassuringly accented voice was supposed to mean. Then the panicking began.

It was pure pandemonium. Children were crying, fully grown adults ran around screaming like headless chickens, and in the middle of it all only Harry appeared to notice the zombie smiling on the corner of the street.

In plain view it suddenly attacked an unknowing pedestrian, knocking her head off with a single blow.

If the crowds had been frenetic with fear beforehand then the anxiety now was going off the scale. Everyone was running, not knowing or caring where. In mere minutes it seemed to have gone from a single monster in the boy’s sights to hoards of them, crowding up the streets of London. Some of them were newly created zombies, seemingly excited by the prospect of a killing spree, but a select group of them were heading straight towards Harry.

He turned on his heels and ran, his feet somehow picking up the route to the flat he had come from. When he got there he would finally be safe…

***

He had no idea how the zombies had managed to infiltrate his new band of friends, but it certainly wasn’t a good thing. Not only was he totally surrounded in the narrow back-alley, but the corpse of Niall would most definitely have destroyed all traces of the cure him and Liam were creating.

Harry turned towards the crowd of monsters advancing towards him, prepared to fight to the death – for there was no point in living now that he knew he could never back the love of his life. It had all been totally pointless.

And that was when what had once been Louis stepped out from the baying masses of zombies, his beauty marred by the rotting flesh and dead eyes. The younger boy hadn’t been prepared for this, and felt his eyes begin to well up at the sight of the man he had once been able to love.

“Lou,” he choked out. “No!” He was angry at the monsters and what they had done to his boyfriend, but mostly at himself for letting it happen.

What was left of Louis stepped towards him, his glassy eyes showing some sort of emotion – confusion, perhaps?

“Kill him!” someone (or something; they weren’t people any more) yelled from the crowd, and Louis kept making his way towards Harry. Without a word of warning, he threw himself at his partner menacingly, yet instead of a deathly blow to the skull all he felt was a small glass bottle being ripped out of his hands.

Looking up from where he had fallen on the floor he saw Louis tipping the contents of the vial down his throat.

The process was a strange one to watch: the peeling and decaying flesh began to freshen and heal back into place, his scars sealed and lastly his azure eyes regained their spark of life.

.When Louis had finally returned, he looked around for a moment, seemingly bewildered, and then saw Harry on the ground. Reaching out a hand to help the teenager up, the younger boy saw the look of devotion in his eyes that he knew so dearly. They embraced each other, before both remembering where exactly they were. Determined smiles on their faces, they stood back to back facing their two enemies.

If they were going down today then they would do it together.

**Author's Note:**

> OK, I don't have a clue what the fuck this even is, to be honest. Just, er, don't take it too seriously I guess... Also, just for the record I have never seen 28 days/weeks later


End file.
